Sunday, September 8, 2013

...and it didn't go at all as I thought it might.Two months later and I am still hobbling around on my bum foot. I ended up in a walking boot for 6 weeks and now I just have to strengthen up my ankle. I bought myself a pair of Chaco sandals last week so I have some shoes that support my feet and can be adjusted depending on how much swelling there is.Lots has happened but not what I had hoped. We had the grandkids here for 4 weeks of fun. They were great about helping Grammy because "your foot is hurt". They fetched crutches and glasses of water and the phone and various other things. They had lots of special things happening like spending the night at cousin Katie's house, fun Lego projects,

a Strawberry Festival, two new kitties at Grammy's

crafts,

two weeks of swimming lessons,

'working at Grammy's office,

rides on a little steam train ("we get to sit on it - while its moving?!?!?!), helping Papa prune the cedar tree

(they loaded the trailer at least 15 times for the trip to the burn pile - the little smarties figured out a way to load it and leave a 'hole' for them to ride in back and forth), Vacation Bible School, playing on Steve's slot machine, and a BBQ

just to name a few! They had a great time and were so good. They are now back at home and started school - Kindergarten and 2nd grade!Time in the sewing room was rather lacking over the summer but I did get the Bluegrass Festival Auction Quilt finished on time (but only barely).

Since we had a booth for our crafts at the Festival I was able to listen as it was auctioned off for over $300. I also got it's twin quilted and it is almost finished. I also spent a couple days at my sister's and with her and my two nieces we sewed the top of a wedding quilt for our brother's son and his bride. Today my sister was here visiting and we got the quilt sandwiched and basted so I might get started on the quilting this week.Once things started settling down from the kids and other things I started working on finishing up some quilts for the October Quilt Guild Show. I pulled out this UFO of leftover HST's. The lighter triangles were from one quilt and the rest were from two others. I had it to this point in February and then it got put away...

I had decided I wanted to put this on point using the dark read of the outer triangles and some form of sunflowers since I had found a border print with sunflowers and pinecones. I got a pattern for a sunflower with 3D petals but I just wasn't feeling it so I went with my original thought of New York Beauty type sunflowers. Since I wanted the sunflower to be about 8-10" I had to shrink the NYB blocks down to 4" finished. Then I made 4 each of 4 different patterns using the same fabrics as the darker HSTs. I used one of each of the 4 different patterns in each of the sunflowers. I was really happy with those other than I would not recommend 4" NYB blocks to anyone. Then I needed something else for those corners and found a paper pieced pinecone pattern that I again shrunk to 4" and reversed for half of the blocks. I then created the triangles to set this on point using the NYBs and pine cones and then added mitered border print and here it is:

It ended up about 60" square. I am thinking it would make a really great fall tablecloth. I am putting it aside for a bit but I can now fill out the registration form for the quilt show for it.

I am now moving on to another Harry Potter quilt that I want to have done for the show also. I found that doing paper piecing is easy on my foot. I lower my ironing board and pull it a little closer to the sewing table and I can sew and then turn my chair to press and trim the piece and if I need to do any rotary cutting I have a small cutting mat on the sewing table. Hopefully my foot will improve quickly so I can get back to my normal sewing routines.

The garden has suffered from my lack of attention but my beets, onions, beans and Taxi tomatoes have flourished in spite of it. I am working on getting rid of all the weeds now that I can do some work down there.